Plan for the Day

Ava had a peaceful night in the PICU. In fact, she looked so good coming out of anesthesia that once she got settled in and we made sure her nurse was "the hovering type", Matt whisked me home so we could both get a good night of sleep.

Today, these seemed like attainable goals for all of us.

The preliminary biopsy readings are, at best...not devestating, and possibly hopeful. How's that for hedging??

Her MRI still shows lots of problems with many areas of her brain. So the biopsy was necessary, and while they were in there, they collected a small piece of the muscle in her temple, because that might give us more answers, and doing it now might help her avoid another sedation.

The first glance at the tissue samples seems to indicate the tissue they collected is not an agressive cancer tumor. However, that doesn't rule out the possibility that the tissue still in her brain could become cancerous, or that there is already cancerous tumor growing elsewhere in a different part of the tissue that we didn't collect...thus, we are not devestated, and moderately hopeful!

We have to wait for the final reading which will happen in a number of weeks to get anything concrete. Even then, what they're seeing in Ava's brain is so rare, the "results" may be simply labels, without clear treatment or prognosis information attached to them.

So yet again we wait, we rest, we continue to trust our Ava Bean into God's capable hands, and thank him for her every breath.

We decided Ava could use extra support while she recovers, so we wrapped her up in her sister blanket. Some friends (thanks Schneidimotos!) sent it to us when Hannah was born, and it had the three girls names on it. We added Ava's and now it's a perfect!

Thank you for all the prayers and support.